When he got in his car in Poway, Phil Plantier was the Lake Elsinore Storm’s hitting coach. When he got out of his car an hour later, he was a manager.

“I had no idea what had happened,” said Plantier. “When you’re a minor league coach, you know that when you get into this job, you’re basically going to do whatever somebody asks you. Actually, whatever somebody else tells you. You just do the best you can.”

Plantier’s done extremely well since replacing Carlos Lezcano, who cited family matters when suddenly announcing his resignation in the hours before the Storm’s home game June 2. Only 43 games short of his 1,000th minor league win, Lezcano guided the Single-A Storm to four consecutive playoffs and was the California League’s reigning Manager of the Year when stepping down.

“Having Phil take over was a no-brainer,” said Randy Smith, the Padres’ vice president of player development/international operations. “He had experience as a manager. He had the players’ trust. It was a natural progression, even though I know it’s not something he wants to do.

“He’s going to be a helluva big-league hitting coach in the future, but he’s picking us up now, doing us a favor. And, obviously, the team’s really responded to him.”

Having finished third in the league before the All-Star break that constitutes the end of the first half of the season, the Storm won its first five games of the second half and was tied for the Cal South lead at 8-3 through Sunday. If he’s not careful, those kinds of results on a sustained basis might make folks think Plantier’s indeed on the managerial fast track toward the majors.

“No, no. no, absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head. “My passion is hitting. I love hanging out in the batting cage. That’s what I’ll love as long as I live. ”

To be sure, hitting was Plantier’s thing as a major league player over parts of seven-plus seasons, the best of which easily was a 1993 campaign in which he swatted 34 homers and drove in 100 runs for the Padres. The twist is that Plantier was a slugger who struck out a lot, but he now focuses on getting minor-leaguers to embrace the Padres’ mantra of “low-trajectory, hard-contact” hitting.

Meaning, singles and extra-base hits, but not a lot of “big-fly” homers.

“Nonstop,” said Plantier, asked about implementing the Padres’ philosophy into his own theories of hitting. “With the ballpark (Petco) we have, you have to teach guys to be a complete player. They’ve got to be able to play both sides, got to be able to play defense, and they’ve got to develop pitch selection and strike-zone control. You’re gonna have to know how to play the situational game. You’re gonna have to be able to hit doubles.

“Guys that loft the baseball aren’t going to have a whole lot of success there, so the last thing we’re going to do is teach guys to loft the baseball.”

Something’s working. The Storm leads the California League in most of the significant nonpower offensive categories — runs, hits, doubles, RBI, on-base percentage — while batting just seven points shy of .300 as a team.

The job of hitting coach at Lake Elsinore was particularly appealing to Plantier, 42, who’d served in that capacity and as skipper in the minor league system of the Seattle Mariners the past three years. The Diamond in Lake Elsinore is a straight shot up Interstate 15 from Poway, where Plantier starred at Poway High, and he’s usually in the company of teenage son Tyler from the drive to the ballpark through pregame drills.

Certainly, his playing days with the Padres taught Plantier a baseball lifetime’s worth about rolling with the most sudden of changes. He was traded to San Diego and traded away twice, the first time as part of the biggest and most pivotal swap in franchise history, the deal that brought Ken Caminiti and Steve Finley to San Diego and launched the Padres toward the World Series of 1998.

Smith personally acquired and traded Plantier twice, first as Padres general manager, then as GM of the Detroit Tigers. Plantier’s career ended in 1997, and after two years of extensive golf and bass-fishing, he enrolled at Cal State San Marcos and earned his degree in social science. (“Hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said of the B.A. diploma, proudly.)

Returning to baseball, he coached at Point Loma Nazarene, managed a semipro team in the Alaska Summer League and an independent-ball club. There’s something about the Class A level of the minor leagues, though, that really can make the coach feel like a teacher.

“Players here are just still learning who they are at this stage of the game, what they have to do as individuals to help themselves get there quicker,” said Plantier. “This is where all that starts to come together, because this is where the competition gets a little bit better. Probably the biggest jump is from this to Double-A, so we want to make sure guys are having success and having it in a way that’s going to transfer to higher levels.”